National Agriculture Day…

 

This is National Ag Week - March 15-21, 2009! Tomorrow is actually National Ag Day - March 20, 2009, but we might as well celebrate today since all week as been ag week.

 

Here are a few Fun Facts about Agriculture, but the list is a lot longer!

• Today's beef is leaner than ever before and fits within the guidelines for a healthy diet that is low in saturated fat. Beef is 20 percent leaner than USDA indicated just 14 years ago, and there are at least 29 cuts of beef , including many favorites, that meet government guidelines for lean. Thirteen of the 29 lean beef cuts have, on average, only one more gram of saturated fat than a skinless chicken breast per 3-ounce serving. Yet, beef's leanest cuts have eight times more vitamin B12, six times more zinc and three times more iron than a skinless chicken breast.
• Americans today consume 17.3 billion quarts of popped popcorn each year! The average American eats about 68 quarts!
• In the United States, lettuce is the second most popular fresh vegetable.
• Blueberries are the second most popular berry in the United States. (it didn’t say what the  most popular one was!!)
• Occasionally, a hen will produce double-yolked eggs throughout her egg-laying career. It is rare, but not unusual, for a young hen to produce an egg with no yolk at all.  (last semester I had one with 2 yolks! made for some yummy scrambled eggs.)
• Asparagus is a member of the Lily family and is related to onions, leeks, and garlic. (i love asparagus.)

For my Kansas Friends, here are some Kansas Ag Facts:

• Principal crops grown in Kansas are wheat, sorghum (milo), hay and corn. Approximately 10 million bushels of wheat are harvested each year in Kansas. Reno, Sumner and Thomas counties lead the state in wheat production. At least 90% of the land area in Kansas (47 million acres) is devoted to agriculture production. Kansas ranks first in the number of commercial cattle processed with 8.03 million head (1999). Buffalo have made a comeback in Kansas with more than 6,000 head raised on ranches and refuges. 
  
  
                                  KSU Experiment station hay making.

And here are Colorado Ag Facts:

• Today, there are more than 2.70 million head of cattle and calves and 12,900 beef producers
  throughout Colorado. Colorado ranks:
  • 10th in overall cattle numbers nationwide
  • 4th in cattle on feed
  • 4th in fed cattle marketings
• Dairy farm production is Colorado’s second largest agricultural business.
• Colorado plants approximately 1.3 million acres of corn and

  2.4 million acres of wheat.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CSU student farming.

And for Cortney, here are some Wisconsin Ag Facts:

• The #2 dairy state
• Genex headquarters (and those other ones…i think they are called ABS & Accelerated Genetics, is that right Cort?)
• Wisconsin top commodities:
  (by dollar value) Source: 2006, Wisconsin Agricultural Statistics Service
  1. Milk: $3.53 billion
  2. Cattle & calves: $877 million
  3. Corn: $589 million
  4. Greenhouse & nursery: $237 million
  5. Soybeans: $240 million
  6. Potatoes: $162 million
  7. Cranberries: $124 million
  8. Hogs: $120 million
  9. Hay: $90 million
  10. Broilers: $70 million